Marking an SOS signal "not interesting"

[Raptor]

Still biding my time until my ship(s) are ready to do COM missions and kick some pirate arses. So it's SOS missions for now. Being a taxi corp :p  bringing stranded crews home is our raison d'être. I'm not really a mobile petrol station however (though when I'v e enough fuel left I'm willing to sell it at SOS signals), and definitely not Flying Doctors in space, so ignore calls for medicines. But with three ships on continuous rotation, I sometimes lose track of which signals I've already visited.

Therefore, I'd love to have the option to mark a (visited) signal "not interesting", so that I don't waste valuable jump calculation time on them until another humble man trying to make his way in the universe fixes the problem.

[Matamaure001]

If i understand you well, you are not interested in fuel and med SOS missions. So you only take the pod missions!

Let me explain something: The number of new SOS missions generated by the game is proportional to the number of SOS missions removed from an area. So let say you take a pod mission, the game will generate a new mission. What kind of mission would it be? There is 2 kinds of COM missions and 4 kinds of SOS missions, if the probabilities of generating any kind of missions was equal (it is not the case) to make things simple, there would be a 16.7% chance of getting a new pod mission (then 83.3% chance of getting a useless mission for you). The end result with time is that the map will only contain useless missions.

The remedy is simple, when you patrol an area, take all SOS missions so new interesting mission could be generated. This is what I do.

If you do not believe me, make a survey of the complete cluster around  SOL. SOS missions pay more the further we are from SOL, so the ones close to SOL are not interesting this is why they are so numerous there. COM missions pay the same what ever their location, this is why there are so few of them close to SOL.

Call to help: All captains, please, clean up the SOS missions around ring 0 to 2. Thx. Doing this will bring more COM missions in ring 0 to 2.

[sargas]

what Mata said.

If you take only rescue missions, eventually there will not be any more 'pod people' regenerated.

[Rostin]

Raptor, once you start doing COMs you will have more fuel and medicine than you know what to do with 

So in the future you will not need to mark them because you will have supplies enough to do any SOS

[JamJulLison]

When I used to do SOS missions I would usually first travel out to the 4th ring. quadrant 4 in any direction. Then travel along that outer 4th ring in a clock wise direction going straight along the map each time.   So as not to confuse you. Say go east until your in the 4th ring. Then I would pick up missions there and make my way south and keep picking up COM missions until I reached the corner of the ring. Then I would go west and collect missions until I reached the next corner. I am sure you get the idea.  I would bring medicines to sell. They can be decent for making money.  I didn't do fuel missions because I needed all the fuel I could get.  I would keep going until either i was low on fuel or until my ship was full of pod people. I also brought diamonds with me for backup fuel.  Usually 1000 on most of my SOS ships. When you got VIP and use convert diamonds you get a good amount of fuel.  Since your income is lower for now you might want to pick a different source of backup fuel but your going to need something.  The outer ring though is really the best place to pick up the SOS missions though.

[Matamaure001]

JLL, if you do not do fuel mission, we would end up with only fuel mission left to do. You have to do the fuel & med missions to have new pod missions.

[JamJulLison]

JLL, if you do not do fuel mission, we would end up with only fuel mission left to do. You have to do the fuel & med missions to have new pod missions.

I don't do any missions at all anymore. I gave up SOS missions months ago.  I have no need for them now.  Plus it takes up too much of my time to do them.  Yes by skipping them it did lower some of the regenerate rate. But I did pick up all pod and medicine ones. So that at least helped.  If I hadn't done it this way I would have been burning through fuel at a much faster rate.

[Raptor]

Thanks for all the advice and explanations guys. Will make sure that I'll also ferry more fuel and meds around then, even though cargo bay space remains at a premium. Am close to getting 50k power on 1 ship so that they won't laugh in my face when trying to answer a COM mission. Hope that Rostin's right on them ;)

[Raptor]

Oh, and will indeed travel further out as well. In fact did my first random jump the other day, just because of that. Could only take enough fuel to return home from 150 LY out, so I had to decline most of the SOS calls. The ones I could answer probably make it worthwhile sending a ship that far out for 2-3 days. Building quicker WHG's at the moment to speed things up and make them really profitable, but in a lovely catch 22 situation I need to make proper money to make money properly...

[Rostin]

Oh, and will indeed travel further out as well. In fact did my first random jump the other day, just because of that. Could only take enough fuel to return home from 150 LY out, so I had to decline most of the SOS calls. The ones I could answer probably make it worthwhile sending a ship that far out for 2-3 days. Building quicker WHG's at the moment to speed things up and make them really profitable, but in a lovely catch 22 situation I need to make proper money to make money properly...

Haha, welcome to the game... 

[Raptor]

... And to life in general, for that matter

[Raptor]

Five months on, I'm doing COMs properly.

And still find it annoying to be confronted with cr@p prospector missions I've visited before. (I do deal with all fuel and med requests nowadays). Meanwhile, new recruits to SPQNR are now in the phase I was in five months ago. They, too, will outgrow it, but the point is that there'll ALWAYS be people who are helped by the ability to flag a signal as visited/ignorable.

Sir Emi: will you consider including such an option? In exchange for info on a bug on the subject?  

[Matamaure001]

My solution is quite simple, this is what I do. I never leave a mission behind me, so I never visit a mission a second time lol. Let me rephrase: I take all mission I go to, interesting or not. I deliver the not interesting to earth.

[sargas]

It's just not feasible to flag a mission. They are not as permanent as star systems (they will disappear soon). The best you can do is try to keep a list in your notebook.

And, if we do not accept them all, they will not re-spawn normally.

[Merkaba]

how do you keep the bad missions separated from the good missions?  lol my cargo is a mess of prospectors.  i figured i'd just write down which to keep but lol i have 3 in the same secotr.  2 are horid and one is good.  but which?